Recent content by MickeyD

Ask him to share whatever he is smoking. Kondias were made in Spain from the 60's to the early 80's and were pretty nice machines but parts were hard to get back then and I imagine worse now. If Clausing has any they are going to be expensive. Looks like a nice $2500 to $3500 machine.

That LeBlond is a heavy duty model and as long as it is not totally trashed by neglect, it is a great machine. The paint from the 40s and 50s has not aged very well and you get a lot of lift and flaking (most have been painted multiple times) and add in a lot of oil/grease and dirt they end up...

I run 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of aluminum a month. Best rule of thumb is stick with a 4 degree ramp in and cut your ramp feed rate to half of your normal feed rate. Also, don't believe the hype on super ramping endmills, you will cut your tool life dramatically by listening to them. I don't...

If you think that steel is bad, 6061 aluminum flat or round bar (I buy 3,000 to 5,000 pounds a month) has gone from $1.95 a pound in January to $3.80 a pound now and the distributors are forecasting $5.00 by next January. This hurts.

Just before the pandemic started I started building a 4,000 foot shop out at our ranch (great timing but it has kept me out of trouble). Put down 6" of 6Ksi fiber reinforced concrete with lots of half in rebar, did a slick finish on the concrete, and then put a building up that is now dried in...

Supposedly Monarch still has brushes for these (https://monarchlathe.com/services/parts) so that would be the first place that I would try. I have a British spec Hardinge HLV-BK (the older narrow bed version) that the previous owner converted to VFD drive from the old reeves drive setup (220...

Call your local Harley Davidson shop because bikers love chrome and they should be able to point you in the right direction. Are you going to get the motors re-dipped while you have them out? If you have a good local motor shop tell them what you have and they might be able to give them a long...

I suspect that during the war they used what they could get so that notch in the bearing might be for something totally different. From looking at the pictures of yours, it looks like it has the steel decorative bars on the cast door on the front of the base - non-wartime machines had...

The C means that it has a metal shield and V indicates the snap ring to retain it (OD is probably a thou or two under a press fit bearing). If you google the bearing numbers you can usually find a suitable replacement. BTY, you are doing a heck of a job and really make me happy that my...

The replacements that I got looked the same as the old ones but they were not corroded or clogged like the old ones - they just worked like they should. Some of the old ones were totally stopped up and at least another just drooled oil out so I ended up with very uneven oiling. When I got the...

Grant - you are doing very nice work on that machine. I had one for a time about 20 years ago and it was almost a work of art in the shop and it looks like yours will be the same. I really did not see a lot of closeups of the ways - how are they? When you pull the carriage (a bear of a job in...

I have had a couple of Clausing machines over the years and they were always nicely finished and good quality. Their lathes (http://www.lathes.co.uk/clausing/page4.html) are above the Atlas machines in capability and weight but can still be moved without the help of riggers (helped a friend...

Enclosed lean-to on the side of the barn (you might even think about doing one on each side). Around here people just add on until they run out of head room from the roof getting too low.

I have two old electric lifts, one is a 54" x 11' deck with off road tires, and the other a 4' x 8' indoor lift. Both have old school discrete switches for the control, easy to work on and very stable even when up over 20 feet. I have used both of them in the mud while building a new...

When we had the big freeze in February down here in Texas (two degrees) we had no power for about five days. I had brought the welder (Hobart 11KW) back from the ranch and wired two 50 amp male welder plugs (a buddy of mine christened it the "Danger Plug") together to tie the welder to the...